Our founder & CEO, Shobha Tummala was recently nominated for the Good-Well Girls 2011 Real Action Hero Award! Below is Shobha’s nomination, which was written by brand director, Jennifer Pesce. To vote for Shobha please comment “I vote for Shobha Tummala.”
I would love to nominate Shobha Tummala as a good-well real action hero! Our heroine is the founder & CEO of Shobha, the Manhattan-based hair removal brand, known for its mini-chain of salons & natural product line. But Shobha offers more than just skin-deep beauty, her real beauty shines from her heart. She is deeply committed to the education of underserved women & children via various non-profit ventures.
It’s been a long journey from a hairy childhood to Harvard Business School & finally to beauty & benevolence. Shobha has felt passionate about education since she was a small girl spending her summers in India with her grandparents, seeing how poverty precluded many from opportunities. Since opening her first Shobha® Salon in 2001, Shobha has been committed to furthering the lives of South Asian women & children. Her company has sponsored ten women’s college educations through Sarada Kalyan Bhandar & has contributed to school on wheels, which converts old buses into mobile classrooms in Mumbai & Pune for children on the streets, offering them an alternative to begging & teaching them that education is their way out of poverty.
Most recently, Shobha has taken on partial ownership of an orphanage in Hyderabad, India. Shobha’s Home For Girls & Women is dedicated to her grandparents. This year Shobha is making the third & final installment to complete her $100,000 contribution. The donation will serve as an endowment fund & only the interest earned will be used to run the facility, which will ensure that the home will be well-financed for decades to come without ever dipping into the money donated. The home is run by two retired professors who value education & are making sure that the orphans are cared for & are able to attend school. Shobha is actually visiting the school this week! It is Shobha’s hope that these early philanthropic steps lay the groundwork for full-fledged non-profit organization in the years to come.
In a nutshell, Shobha has a truly unique set of superpowers – kindness, intelligence, entrepreneurial courage & generosity – that has not only made her a successful business woman, but has also allowed others, who can’t provide for themselves, to reap the benefits & enjoy a brighter future.